We had a great day today with lots of stories to tell about our trip. We left Merced early in the morning and stopped at a local nut store. This area is chock full of nut trees, pecans, almonds, walnuts and pistachios. We had seen an advertisement for the Buchanan Hollow Nut Company just south of Merced, so we stopped in to get some local samples. Quite an interesting experience as we had found a 1971 Hummel plate on sale there - don't know why we were looking for that year (must have been connected with someone in our life :-)). Anyway, Charleen who owned the farm got to talking with us because her youngest daughter was born in that year. She was telling us all about the various trees and when they were harvested. Then she mentioned that she had lost her husband six months before and was relating the problems she was going through. Amazing how people will open up to complete strangers. One of the interesting facts we learned is that there are male and female pistachio trees. In one of the photos below, there's a picture of both trees. Charleen said that in a regular orchard, they only needed one male for every ten female trees. When I made the comment that that sounded like a good deal, you can imagine their comments. When I reflected further, I thought better of my comment - one male and one female sounds like a good deal (and much less stressful). The difference between the two trees is that the male only has the pollen and the female the fruit - makes sense.
We then continued on our trip south and west. Drove through Chowchilla, a small town just off US 99 with lots of palm trees. Vi said she didn't want any interstate travel so we ended up on a lot of country roads with great names like Road 9, Ave 18 1/2, etc. Eventually ended up at the road (Panoche Road) I wanted to take over to Hollister only to find a sign that it had a locked gate ahead and needed a permit (see photo in our series from today). So much for the information which I got from BLM a couple of days earlier. To make a long story short, we headed north up I-5 and tried again on Little Panoche Road which was paved (sort of) and took that across the coastal range. It was a great drive - very winding road, not much population, lots of cattle and beautiful scenery. Stopped at the Panoche Inn for some information about a local solar project. It's for sale in case anyone wants to live in the middle of nowhere! It had a sign out in front "Tsunami Warning - In case of tsunami, run like Hell! If they had to worry about a tsunami out there, the whole world is in trouble.
Panoche Road was very winding and at times narrowed down to one lane, but there wasn't any traffic so we didn't have any problems. We eventually came to Hwy 25 and drove north to Hollister As we drove north, we saw a local golf course and decided to play. It was a nine-hole course, Pinnacle Hills Golf Course. It was fun course to play although in pretty bad shape. I would have called it a cow pasture, but that would have been an insult to a cow pasture! When we were through playing and back on the road again, not five minutes up the road we came across the Ridgecrest Golf and Country Club which was a beautifully manicured course. Oh well, it probably would have cost a lot more.
Arrived in Monterey and checked in at Hermann Hall at the Naval Postgraduate School. Paul teaches here occasionally, but with our normal good timing, he was elsewhere. NPS has an interesting history which I've mentioned on past blogs. It was a resort hotel back in the early 1920's and 1930's owned by Del Monte. When WW II broke out, Del Monte (the man, not the company) offered it to the US Navy for a pre-flight school, so the beautiful halls and rooms were turned into classrooms and dormitories. After the war, it kind of fell into disuse until Del Monte offered to sell it to the USN. They accepted and they moved the NPS from Annapolis to Monterey. Del Monte went on to build a little spot out on the ocean which came to be Pebble Beach - ever heard of it?
This evening we drove downtown and found a neat brewery to have dinner. We wondered why it was so crowded and then realized it was the opening night for the Warriors - Cleveland basketball game. Good food and great local brews. After dinner, we drove out on the local fishing wharf to watch the sunset. A fog bank was moving in and really cooled it off. Far from the 104 degrees we had playing golf the previous day, the weather today was more in the high 80's in the San Joaquin Valley and in the mid-60's when we were in Monterey. Great way to end the day with seals barking in the background and sailboats out on Monterey Bay.
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